Found at last: Bizarre, egg-laying mammal finally rediscovered after 60 years

More than sixty years after it was last recorded, an expedition team has rediscovered an iconic, egg-laying mammal in one of the most unexplored regions of the world. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, named after famed broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, was captured for the first time in photos and video footage using remote trail cameras set up in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia's Papua Province.

Alongside the echidna's rediscovery, the expedition -- a partnership between the University of Oxford, Indonesian NGO Yayasan Pelayanan Papua Nenda (YAPPENDA), Cenderawasih University (UNCEN), Papua BBKSDA, and the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN), Re:Wild -- made many other remarkable finds. These included Mayr's honeyeater, a bird lost to science since 2008; an entirely new genus of tree-dwelling shrimp; countless new species of insects; and a previously unknown cave system. This was despite the difficulties posed by extremely inhospitable terrain, including venomous animals, blood-sucking leeches, malaria, earthquakes, and exhausting heat.

One of the world's most unusual mammals finally caught on film

Recorded by science only once in 1961, Attenborough's long-beaked echidna is a monotreme: an evolutionarily distinct group of egg-laying mammals that includes the platypus. This echidna species is so special because it is one of only five remaining species of monotremes, the sole guardians of this remarkable branch of the tree of life. Echidnas are notoriously difficult to find since they are nocturnal, live in burrows, and tend to be very shy. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna has never been recorded anywhere outside the Cyclops Mountains, and is currently classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

To give themselves the best chance of finding one, the team deployed over 80 trail cameras, making multiple ascents of the mountains, and climbing more than 11,000 meters (more than the height of Everest) in the process. For almost the entire four weeks that the team spent in the forest, the cameras recorded no sign of the echidna. On the last day, with the last images on the final memory card, the team obtained their shots of the elusive mammal -- the first ever photographs of Attenborough's echidna. The identification of the species was later confirmed by Professor Kristofer Helgen, mammalogist and chief scientist and director of the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI).

Dr James Kempton, a biologist from the University of Oxford who conceived of and led the expedition, said: 'Attenborough's long-beaked echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. Because of its hybrid appearance, it shares its name with a creature of Greek mythology that is half human, half serpent. The reason it appears so unlike other mammals is because it is a member of the monotremes -- an egg-laying group that separated from the rest of the mammal tree-of-life about 200 million years ago.'

'The discovery is the result of a lot of hard work and over three and a half years of planning,' he added. 'A key reason why we succeeded is because, with the help of YAPPENDA, we have spent years building a relationship with the community of Yongsu Sapari, a village on the north coast of the Cyclops Mountains. The trust between us was the bedrock of our success because they shared with us the knowledge to navigate these treacherous mountains, and even allowed us to research on lands that have never before felt the tread of human feet.'

A treasure trove of discoveries

Alongside searching for the echidna, the expedition carried out the first comprehensive assessment of invertebrate, reptile, amphibian, and mammal life in the Cyclops Mountains. With the support of local guides in the expedition team, the scientists were able to create makeshift labs in the heart of the jungle with benches and desks made from forest branches and vines.

By combining scientific techniques with the Papuan team members' experience and knowledge of the forest, the team made a wealth of new discoveries. These included several dozens of insect species completely new to science and the rediscovery of Mayr's honeyeater (Ptiloprora mayri), a bird lost to science since 2008 and named after famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr.

An extraordinary finding was an entirely new genus of ground and tree-dwelling shrimp. 'We were quite shocked to discover this shrimp in the heart of the forest, because it is a remarkable departure from the typical seaside habitat for these animals,' said Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou (a Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History), lead entomologist for the expedition. 'We believe that the high level of rainfall in the Cyclops Mountains means the humidity is great enough for these creatures to live entirely on land.'

The team also revealed a treasure trove of underground species, including blind spiders, blind harvestman, and a whip scorpion, all new to science, in a previously unexplored cave system. This astonishing discovery was made on one of the sacred peaks above Yongsu Sapari where the team had been given special permission to do research. People rarely tread here, and the striking cave system was chanced upon when one team member fell through a moss-covered entrance.

'A beautiful but dangerous land'

Extremely challenging and, at times, life-threatening conditions were at the background of these discoveries. During one of the trips to the cave system, a sudden earthquake forced the team to evacuate. Dr Davranoglou broke his arm in two places, one member contracted malaria, and another had a leech attached to his eye for a day and a half before it was finally removed at a hospital. Throughout the expedition, members were beset by biting mosquitoes and ticks, and faced constant danger from venomous snakes and spiders. Making any progress through the jungle was a slow and exhausting process, with the team sometimes having to cut paths where no humans had ever been before.

'Though some might describe the Cyclops as a "Green Hell," I think the landscape is magical, at once enchanting and dangerous, like something out of a Tolkien book' said Dr Kempton. 'In this environment, the camaraderie between the expedition members was fantastic, with everyone helping to keep up morale. In the evening, we exchanged stories around the fire, all the while surrounded by the hoots and peeps of frogs.'

An enduring legacy

Rediscovering the echidna is only the beginning of the expedition's mission. Attenborough's long-beaked echidna is the flagship animal of the Cyclops Mountains and a symbol of its extraordinary biodiversity. The team hope that its rediscovery will help bring attention to the conservation needs of the Cyclops, and Indonesian New Guinea more generally, and they are committed to supporting long-term monitoring of the echidna. Key to this work is NGO YAPPENDA, whose mission is to protect the natural environment of Indonesian New Guinea through empowerment of Indigenous Papuans. As part of the expedition team, members of YAPPENDA helped train six students from UNCEN in biodiversity surveys and camera trapping during the expedition.

Dr Davranoglou said: 'Tropical rainforests are among the most important and most threatened terrestrial ecosystems. It is our duty to support our colleagues on the frontline through exchanging knowledge, skills, and equipment.'

With the team having only sorted a fraction of the material collected on the expedition, they expect that the coming months will yield even more new species. The intention is to name many of these after the Papuan members of the expedition.

Besides animal specimens, the team also collected over 75 kg of rock samples for geological analysis, which was led by the expedition's chief geologist, Max Webb, from Royal Holloway University, London. These could help answer many questions about how and when the Cyclops Mountains originally formed. The mountains are believed to have formed when an island arc in the Pacific Ocean collided with the New Guinea mainland about 10 million years ago. Combined with the biological findings, this geological work will help the team understand how the extraordinary biodiversity of the Cyclops came to be.

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The trilobites' guide to surviving environmental change

Scientists have worked out how one unusual species of trilobite -- an ancient, sea-dwelling relative of spiders and lobsters -- was able to defend itself against predators and survive a bumpy ride as Earth's oxygen levels fluctuated.

The seas were filled with trilobites for nearly 300 million years starting in the Cambrian Period, some 520 million years ago. During their time on Earth, which lasted much longer than the dinosaurs, they survived two major episodes of mass extinctions and dominated ocean floor ecosystems.

Their armored bodies are divided into three sections: a head, a thorax or middle section, and a rigid tail. There are more than 20,000 known trilobite species and, when mature, most of them have a very specific number of segments in their mid-sections. However, in Aulacopleura koninckii, scientists discovered something unusual.

Though each early growth stage showed little variation in size and shape, mature Aulacopleura developed anywhere between 18 and 22 mid-section segments.

"My collaborators and I thought this species was weird. We couldn't understand why Aulacopleura bodies varied and others living at the same time had a constant number," said Nigel Hughes, UC Riverside paleobiologist and corresponding author of a new study about this trilobite.

"Seeing trilobites with variable numbers of segments in the thorax is like seeing humans born with different numbers of vertebrae in their backs," Hughes said.

The researchers had questions about this anomaly, how it affected the animals' ability to protect itself, and why it might have developed in this way. These questions are answered in a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Like modern pillbugs or "rollie pollies," trilobites curled up into a ball shape to protect themselves from large squid-like creatures, fish, and other predators. When rolled up, they could tuck their tails neatly under their heads, so the soft tissues were protected by their hard exterior skeletons. In the case of Aulacopleura, 3D modelling showed that protection during rolling up was restricted to smaller, immature forms with less than 18 segments in the middle.

"As the number of segments increased, the body proportions did not allow them to tuck their posteriors neatly under their heads and still be completely shielded," Hughes said. "So, why did this species keep adding segments anyway, and how could it survive the nasty predators?"

Based on their virtual reconstructions, it seems highly likely that when Aulacopleura with a large number of mid-segments felt threatened, they would roll up like their relatives and simply let their tails extend past their heads, minimizing the exposed gap.

"Other possible defense maneuvers would have left gaps on the sides that exposed critical organs -- highly unlikely," Hughes said.

As to the question of why this trilobite varied in the number of mid-section segments, the researchers turned to their earlier work. "What is underneath these segments? Legs that serve as gills!" Hughes said. "The more segments, the more surface area for respiration."

Growing additional breathing apparati likely gave these animals the ability to tolerate dips in local seafloor oxygen levels that excluded other species, such as those that preyed on larger Aulacopleura. Parts of the sea floor becoming anoxic forced predators to retreat to sites where oxygen remained sufficient. But larger Aulacopleura, with their extra gills, could stay put, predator-free.

Learning how this species adapted to both biological and physical pressures gives researchers a better understanding of how survival strategies evolve. The way trilobites developed holds clues to how the common ancestor to major groups of modern arthropods, including insects and arachnids, first evolved.

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The other side of the story: How evolution impacts the environment

The story of the peppered moths is a textbook evolutionary tale. As coal smoke darkened tree bark near England's cities during the Industrial Revolution, white-bodied peppered moths became conspicuous targets for predators and their numbers quickly dwindled. Meanwhile, black-bodied moths, which had been rare, thrived and became dominant in their newly darkened environment.

The peppered moths became a classic example of how environmental change drives species evolution. But in recent years, scientists have begun thinking about the inverse process. Might there be a feedback loop in which species evolution drives ecological change? Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Rhode Island shows some of the best evidence yet for that very phenomenon.

In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers show that an evolutionary change in the length of lizards' legs can have a significant impact on vegetation growth and spider populations on small islands in the Bahamas. This is one of the first times, the researchers say, that such dramatic evolution-to-environment effects have been documented in a natural setting.

"The idea here is that, in addition to the environment shaping the traits of organisms through evolution, those trait changes should feed back and drive changes in predator-prey relationships and other ecological interactions between species," said Jason Kolbe, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Rhode Island and one of the study's senior authors. "And we really need to understand how those dynamics work so we can make predictions about how populations are going to persist, and what sort of ecological changes might result."

For the last 20 years, Kolbe and his colleagues have been observing the evolutionary dynamics of anole lizard populations on a chain of tiny islands in the Bahamas. The chain is made up of around 40 islands ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred meters in area -- small enough that the researchers can keep close tabs on the lizards living there. And the islands are far enough apart that lizards can't easily hop from one island to another, so distinct populations can be isolated from each other.

Previous research had shown that brown anoles adapt quickly to the characteristics of surrounding vegetation. In habitats where the diameter of brush and tree limbs is smaller, natural selection favors lizards with shorter legs, which enable individuals to move more quickly when escaping predators or chasing a snack. In contrast, lankier lizards tend to fare better where the tree and plant limbs are thicker. Researchers have shown that this limb length trait can evolve quickly in brown anoles -- in just a few generations.

For this new study, Kolbe and his team wanted to see how this evolved limb-length trait might affect the ecosystems on the tiny Bahamian islands. The idea was to separate short- and long-legged lizards on islands of their own, then look for differences in how the lizard populations affect the ecology of their island homes.

Armed with specialized lizard wrangling gear -- poles with tiny lassos made of dental floss at the end -- the team captured hundreds of brown anoles. They then measured the leg length of each lizard, keeping the ones whose limbs were either especially long or especially short and returning the rest to the wild. Once they had distinct populations of short- and long-limbed lizards, they set each population free on islands that previously had no lizards living on them.

Since the experimental islands were mostly covered by smaller diameter vegetation, the researchers expected that the short-legged lizards would be better adapted to that environment, that is, more maneuverable and better able to catch prey in the trees and brush. The question the researchers wanted to answer was whether the ecological effects of those highly effective hunters could be detected.

After eight months, the researchers checked back on the islands to look for ecological differences between islands stocked with the short- and long-legged groups. The differences, it turned out, were substantial. On islands with shorter-legged lizards, populations of web spiders -- a key prey item for brown anoles -- were reduced by 41% compared to islands with lanky lizards. There were significant differences in plant growth as well. Because the short-legged lizards were better at preying on insect herbivores, plants flourished. On islands with short-legged lizards, buttonwood trees had twice as much shoot growth compared to trees on islands with long-legged lizards, the researchers found.

The results, Kolbe says, help to bring the interaction between ecology and evolution full circle.

"These findings help us to close that feedback loop," Kolbe said. "We knew from previous research that ecological factors shape limb length, and now we show the reciprocal relationship of that evolutionary change on the environment."

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Joro spiders aren't scary: They're shy

Despite their intimidating appearance, the giant yellow and blue-black spiders spreading across the Southeastern U.S. owe their survival to a surprising trait: They're rather timid.

According to a new study from the University of Georgia, the Joro spider may be the shyest spider ever documented.

"One of the ways that people think this spider could be affecting other species is that it's aggressive and out-competing all the other native spiders," said Andy Davis, lead author of the study and a research scientist in UGA's Odum School of Ecology. "So we wanted to get to know the personality of these spiders and see if they're capable of being that aggressive.

"It turns out they're not."

The researchers compared more than 450 spiders' responses to a brief and harmless disturbance across 10 different species.

While most spiders froze for less than a minute before resuming their normal activities, the Joro spiders remained motionless for more than an hour.

"They basically shut down and wait for the disturbance to go away," Davis said. "Our paper shows that these spiders are really more afraid of you than the reverse."

In fact, Joros are relatively harmless to people and pets. Joros won't bite unless cornered. And even if you did manage to somehow annoy a Joro into biting you, its fangs likely wouldn't be large enough to pierce your skin.

Most spiders begin moving quickly after stress, Joros remain immobile for 60+ minutes

To examine the spiders' reaction to stress, the researchers used a turkey baster to gently blow two rapid puffs of air onto individual spiders. This minor disturbance causes the spiders to "freeze" for a period of time, going absolutely still.

The researchers tested more than 30 garden spiders, banded garden spiders and marbled orb weavers. They also analyzed similar data from previously published, peer-reviewed papers that assessed the response of 389 more spiders, comprising five additional species.

All of those spiders began moving again after an average of about a minute and half of stillness.

The Joros, however, stayed frozen with no body or leg movement for over an hour in most cases.

The only other spider species that exhibited a similarly extended response was the Joro spider's cousin, the golden silk spider. Known as Trichonephila clavipes, the golden silk spider and the Joro spider are from the same genus.

Joros may be invasive, but they're not aggressive

Officially known as Trichonephila clavata, the East Asian Joro spider first arrived in Georgia around 2013. The species is native to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, and likely hitched a ride stateside on a shipping container.

The species has since rapidly spread across the state and much of the Southeast. Joro spiders easily number in the millions now. And there's not much we can do to stop them from increasing their range.

Davis' previous research even suggested the invasive arachnids could spread beyond their current habitats and through most of the Eastern Seaboard.

"Most people think 'invasive' and 'aggressive' are synonymous," said Amitesh Anerao, co-author of the study and an undergraduate researcher at the university. "People were freaking out about the Joro spiders at first, but maybe this paper can help calm people down."

Joro spiders built to withstand human activity

Joros are regularly spotted in areas native Georgia spiders don't typically inhabit.

They build their golden webs between powerlines, on top of stoplights and even above the pumps at local gas stations -- none of which are particularly peaceful spots.

The researchers believe the Joro spiders' shyness may help them better endure the barrage of noise, vibrations and visual stimuli they consistently encounter in urban settings. Their prolonged freeze response to being startled could help conserve the Joro spiders' energy.

If you're wondering how something so mild-mannered could spread the way Joro spiders have, you aren't the only one.

"One thing this paper tells me is that the Joros' rapid spread must be because of their incredible reproductive potential," Davis said. "They're simply outbreeding everybody else. It's not because they're displacing native spiders or kicking them out of their own webs."

Read more at Science Daily

Welsh 'weird wonder' fossils add piece to puzzle of arthropod evolution

The most famous fossils from the Cambrian explosion of animal life over half a billion years ago are very unlike their modern counterparts. These "weird wonders," such as the five-eyed Opabinia with its distinctive frontal proboscis, and the fearsome apex predator Anomalocaris with its radial mouthparts and spiny feeding appendages, have become icons in popular culture. However, they were only quite recently recognised as extinct stages of evolution that are crucial for understanding the origins of one of the largest and most important animal phyla, the arthropods (a group that includes modern crabs, spiders, and millipedes).

In an article published today in Nature Communications, two new specimens with striking similarities to Opabinia are described from a new fossil deposit recording life in the Ordovician Period, 40 million years after the Cambrian explosion. This deposit, located in a sheep field near Llandrindod Wells in mid Wales (UK), was discovered during the COVID-19 lockdowns by independent researchers and Llandrindod residents Dr Joseph Botting and Dr Lucy Muir, Honorary Research Fellows at Amgueddfa Cymru -- National Museum Wales.

The quarry is well known as one of several local sites yielding new species of fossil sponges. "When the lockdown started, I thought I'd make one more trip to collect some last sponges before finally writing them up," said Botting, "of course, that was the day that I found something sticking its tentacles out of a tube instead."

"This is the sort of thing that palaeontologists dream of, truly soft-body preservation," said Muir, "we didn't sleep well, that night." That was the beginning of an extensive and ongoing investigation that grew into an international collaboration, with lead author Dr Stephen Pates (University of Cambridge) and senior author Dr Joanna Wolfe (The Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University).

Among the fossils unearthed so far are two very unexpected leftovers from the Cambrian "weird wonders." Pates met with Botting and Muir to study the specimens using microscopes purchased through crowd-funding to examine the tiny specimens. The larger specimen measured 13 mm, while the smaller measured a miniscule 3 mm (for comparison Opabinia specimens can be 20 times as long).

Exhaustive studies during this visit revealed additional details in the new specimens. Some of these features are also found in Opabinia, such as triangular, squishy lobopod 'legs' for interacting with the sediment, and -- in the smaller specimen -- a tail fan with blades similar in shape to Opabinia's recently described sister, Utaurora. However other features recognised in the material, such as sclerites covering the head as well as the presence of spines on the proboscis, were not known from any opabiniid and instead hinted at possible radiodont (including Anomalocaris) affinities. The differences between the two specimens led the researchers to wonder were these due to changes during the growth of one species, or did they instead suggest that two distinct species were present in this new deposit?

The authors describe the new taxon, Mieridduryn bonniae, with the larger specimen designated the holotype. The status of the smaller specimen was left open, reflecting these different possibilities. "The size of the smaller specimen is comparable to some modern arthropod larvae -- we had to take into account this possibility in our analyses," said Wolfe.

The genus name Mieridduryn is derived from the Welsh language, and translates as "bramble-snout," reflecting the spiny proboscis in the new material. It is pronounced like "me-airy-theerin." "Many scientific names are made using Latin or Greek words," Muir said, "but we really wanted to honour Wales, where the specimens were discovered, and so chose to use the Welsh language." The species name bonniae pays tribute to the niece of the landowners, Bonnie. "The landowners have been very supportive of our research, and Bonnie has been avidly following our progress, even attending some of our Zoom updates," said Botting.

The researchers used phylogenetic analyses, comparing the new fossils with 57 other living and fossil arthropods, radiodonts, and panarthropods, to determine their place in the history of arthropod evolution. "The best-supported position for our Welsh specimens, whether considered as one or two species, were more closely related to modern arthropods than to opabiniids. These analyses suggested that Mieridduryn and the smaller specimen were not "true" opabiniids," said Pates.

Crucially, these results suggested that a proboscis -- thought to represent a fused pair of head appendages -- was not unique to opabiniids, but instead was present in the common ancestor of radiodonts and deuteropods (more derived, modern arthropods), and through evolutionary time may have reduced to become the labrum that covers the mouth in modern arthropods. However, the second-best-supported position for these specimens was as true opabiniids, so the authors enquired a bit further to test the robustness of this first result.

"These Welsh animals are 40 million years younger than Opabinia and Utaurora" said Wolfe, "so it was important to assess the implications of some features, such as spines on the appendages or a carapace, evolving convergently with radiodonts in our analyses." If some, or all, the features shared between the Welsh animals and radiodonts were instead considered to have evolved convergently, the analyses strongly favoured these specimens being considered true opabiniids, the first from outside North America and the youngest by 40 million years. Whatever the eventual conclusion, the fossils are an important new piece in the arthropod evolutionary jigsaw.

Read more at Science Daily

Walking and slithering aren't as different as you think

Abrahamic texts treat slithering as a special indignity visited on the wicked serpent, but evolution may draw a more continuous line through the motion of swimming microbes, wriggling worms, skittering spiders and walking horses.

A new study found that all of these kinds of motion are well represented by a single mathematical model.

"This didn't come out of nowhere -- this is from our real robot data," said Dan Zhao, first author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a recent Ph.D. graduate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan.

"Even when the robot looks like it's sliding, like its feet are slipping, its velocity is still proportional to how quickly it's moving its body."

Unlike the dynamic motion of gliding birds and sharks and galloping horses -- where speed is driven, at least in part, by momentum -- every bit of speed for ants, centipedes, snakes and swimming microbes is driven by changing the shape of the body. This is known as kinematic motion.

The expanded understanding of kinematic motion could change the way roboticists think about programming many-limbed robots, opening new possibilities for walking planetary rovers, for instance.

Shai Revzen, professor of electrical and computer engineering at U-M and senior author of the study, explained that two- and four-legged robots are popular because more legs are extremely complex to model using current tools.

"This never sat well with me because my work was on cockroach locomotion," Revzen said. "I can tell you many things about cockroaches. One of them is that they're not brilliant mathematicians."

And if cockroaches can walk without solving extremely complex equations, there has to be an easier way to program walking robots. The new finding offers a place to start.

Slipping feet complicates typical motion models for robots, and the assumption was that it might add an element of momentum to the motion of many-legged robots. But in the model reported by the U-M team, it is not so different from lizards that "swim" in sand or microbes swimming in water.

Because microbes are small, the water seems a lot thicker and stickier -- as if a human was trying to swim in honey. In all of these cases, the limbs move through the surrounding medium, or slide over a surface, rather than being connected at a stationary point.

The team discovered the connection by taking a known model that describes swimming microbes and then reconfiguring it to use with their multi-legged robots. The model reliably reflected their data, which came from multipods -- modular robots that can operate with 6 to 12 legs -- and a six-legged robot called BigAnt.

The team also collaborated with Glenna Clifton, assistant professor of biology at the University of Portland in Oregon, who provided data on ants walking on a flat surface. While the robot legs slip a lot -- up to 100% of the time for the multipods -- ant feet have much firmer connections with the ground, slipping only 4.7% of the time.

Even so, the ants and robots followed the same equations, with their speeds proportional to how quickly they moved their legs. It turned out that this kind of slipping didn't alter the kinematic nature of the motion.

As for what this suggests about how walking evolved, the team points to the worm believed to be the last common ancestor for all creatures that have two sides that are mirror images of each other. This worm, wriggling through water, already had the foundations of the motion that enabled the first animals to walk on land, they propose. Even humans begin learning to propel ourselves kinematically, crawling on hands and knees with the three points of contact on the ground at any time.

The skills of managing momentum -- running with four legs or fewer, walking or running on two legs, flying or gliding -- ladder on top of that older knowledge about how to move, the researchers suggest.

Read more at Science Daily

Spider can hide underwater for 30 minutes

A tropical spider species uses a "film" of air to hide underwater from predators for as long as 30 minutes, according to faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Lindsey Swierk, assistant research professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York, observed a large tropical spider (Trechalea extensa) fleeing from humans and hiding underwater; this species was not previously known to use water to escape. Swierk had previously observed a Costa-Rican lizard species that was able to stay underwater for 16 minutes to hide from predators.

"For a lot of species, getting wet and cold is almost as risky to survival as dealing with their predators to begin with," said Swierk. "Trechalea spiders weren't previously known to hide underwater from threats -- and certainly not for so long."

The spider spent about 30 minutes underwater. While submerged, it kept a "film" of air over its entire body. Swierk and her colleagues suspect that the fuzzy hairs that cover its body help it to maintain this film of air, which helps to prevent thermal loss while underwater, or to prevent water from entering the spider's respiratory organs.

The film of air surrounding the spider when it is underwater appears to be held in place by hydrophobic hairs covering the spider's entire body surface," said Swierk. "It's so complete that the spider almost looks like it's been dipped in silver. The film of air might serve to keep the respiratory openings away from water, since these spiders are air-breathing. The film of air might also help to minimize thermal loss to the cold stream water that the spider submerges itself in."

According to Swierk, this observation provides new insight into how species can cope with the problem of finding refuge underwater.

Read more at Science Daily

Spiders use webs to extend their hearing

Everyone knows that humans and most other vertebrate species hear using eardrums that turn soundwave pressure into signals for our brains. But what about smaller animals like insects and arthropods? Can they detect sounds? And if so, how?

Distinguished Professor Ron Miles, a Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty member at Binghamton University's Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, has been exploring that question for more than three decades, in a quest to revolutionize microphone technology.

A newly published study of orb-weaving spiders -- the species featured in the classic children's book "Charlotte's Web" -- has yielded some extraordinary results: The spiders are using their webs as extended auditory arrays to capture sounds, possibly giving spiders advanced warning of incoming prey or predators.

The paper, "Outsourced Hearing in an Orb-Weaving Spider that Uses its Web as an Auditory Sensor," published March 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first evidence that a spider can outsource hearing to its web.

It is well-known that spiders respond when something vibrates their webs, such as potential prey. In these new experiments, researchers for the first time show that spiders turned, crouched or flattened out in response to sounds in the air.

The study is the latest collaboration between Miles and Ron Hoy, a biology professor from Cornell, and it has implications for designing extremely sensitive bio-inspired microphones for use in hearing aids and cell phones.

Jian Zhou, who earned his PhD in Miles' lab and is doing postdoctoral research at the Argonne National Laboratory, and Junpeng Lai, a current PhD student in Miles' lab, are co-first authors. Miles, Hoy and Associate Professor Carol I. Miles from the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biological Sciences at Binghamton are also authors for this study. Grants from the National Institutes of Health to Ron Miles funded the research.

A single strand of spider silk is so thin and sensitive that it can detect the movement of vibrating air particles that make up a soundwave, which is different from how eardrums work. Ron Miles' previous research has led to the invention of novel microphone designs that are based on hearing in insects.

"The spider is really a natural demonstration that this is a viable way to sense sound using viscous forces in the air on thin fibers," he said. "If it works in nature, maybe we should have a closer look at it."

Spiders can detect miniscule movements and vibrations through sensory organs on their tarsal claws at the tips of their legs, which they use to grasp their webs. Orb-weaver spiders are known to make large webs, creating a kind of acoustic antennae with a sound-sensitive surface area that is up to 10,000 times greater than the spider itself.

In the study, the researchers used Binghamton University's anechoic chamber, a completely soundproof room under the Innovative Technologies Complex. Collecting orb-weavers from windows around campus, they had the spiders spin a web inside a rectangular frame so they could position it where they wanted.

The team began by using pure tone sound 3 meters away at different sound levels to see if the spiders responded or not. Surprisingly, they found spiders can respond to sound levels as low as 68 decibels. For louder sound, they found even more types of behaviors.

They then placed the sound source at a 45-degree angle, to see if the spiders behaved differently. They found that not only are the spiders localizing the sound source, but they can tell the sound incoming direction with 100% accuracy.

To better understand the spider-hearing mechanism, the researchers used laser vibrometry and measured over one thousand locations on a natural spider web, with the spider sitting in the center under the sound field. The result showed that the web moves with sound almost at maximum physical efficiency across an ultra-wide frequency range.

"Of course, the real question is, if the web is moving like that, does the spider hear using it?" Miles said. "That's a hard question to answer."

Lai added: "There could even be a hidden ear within the spider body that we don't know about."

So the team placed a mini-speaker 5 centimeters away from the center of the web where the spider sits, and 2 millimeters away from the web plane -- close but not touching the web. This allows the sound to travel to the spider both through air and through the web. The researchers found that the soundwave from the mini-speaker died out significantly as it traveled through the air, but it propagated readily through the web with little attenuation. The sound level was still at around 68 decibels when it reached the spider. The behavior data showed that four out of 12 spiders responded to this web-borne signal.

Those reactions proved that the spiders could hear through the webs, and Lai was thrilled when that happened: "I've been working on this research for five years. That's a long time, and it's great to see all these efforts will become something that everybody can read."

The researchers also found that, by crouching and stretching, spiders may be changing the tension of the silk strands, thereby tuning them to pick up different frequencies. By using this external structure to hear, the spider could be able to customize it to hear different sorts of sounds.

Future experiments may investigate how spiders make use of the sound they can detect using their web. Additionally, the team would like to test whether other types of web-weaving spiders also use their silk to outsource their hearing.

"It's reasonable to guess that a similar spider on a similar web would respond in a similar way," Ron Miles said. "But we can't draw any conclusions about that, since we tested a certain kind of spider that happens to be pretty common."

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Noble false widow spider captures bats in the attic

Scientists from the Ryan Institute in NUI Galway have published the first record of a Noble False Widow spider feeding on a protected species of Pipistrelle bats in the UK.

The new study, published today in the international journal Ecosphere,demonstrates that False Widow spiders continue to impact native species.

It is the first time a member of this family of spiders, called Theridiidae, has been recorded preying on a bat anywhere in the world, or any vertebrate in Britain.

It is also the first time for any species of false widow spider to be recorded preying on mammals.

The extraordinary discovery was made by wildlife artist Ben Waddams at his home in north Shropshire, England. On two consecutive days, bats living in the attic were found entangled on the spider's web below the entrance to the roost.

The first bat, a young pup, was completely immobilised with its limbs pinned tightly to the torso with silk. It was slightly shrivelled and discoloured from the spider feeding off the remains.

A second, much larger adult bat, was also captured and entangled in the web but as it was still alive, the bat was rescued from the web and released.

In Britain, the Pipistrelle bats are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981, and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017.

The rather grisly event is not as uncommon as people might expect, three years ago the Noble False Widow spider was reported feeding on a protected species of native lizard in Ireland.

Originating from Madeira and the Canary Islands, the Noble False Widow spider Steatoda nobilis has the potential to become one of the world's most invasive species of spider.

It was first reported in southern England in 1879 and has increased its range and population density in recent decades, spreading northwards towards Scotland and westward through Wales and Ireland. In that time the species has also spread globally from across Europe, East Asia, North America, and South America.

The species is known for its medical significance, having the ability to cause a range of mild to severe symptoms in people who are bitten, but little is known about its impact on native species.

Over the past five years, the team led by Dr Michel Dugon in NUI Galway's Ryan Institute, have been studying a wide range of characteristics specific to the species including its venom, symptoms after envenomation, ecology and behaviour.

Dr Michel Dugon, Head of the Venom Systems Lab, Ryan Institute, NUI Galway and senior author of the study, said: "We have been working on the Noble False Widow for the past five years, and have learnt a great deal about this species -- yet, we are still surprised by its ability to adapt to new environments and make the most of the resources available. It is a truly remarkable species."

Dr John Dunbar, Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral fellow, Venom Systems Lab, Ryan Institute, NUI Galway and lead author of the study, said: "In more exotic parts of the world, scientists have been documenting such predation events by spiders on small vertebrates for many years, but we are only beginning to realise just how common these events occur. Now that this alien species has become well established in Ireland and Britain, we are witnessing such fascinating events on our very own doorstep.

"Even other, much smaller, species of false widows are known to capture and feed on snakes and lizards. This study presents yet another example of the invasive impact by the Noble false widow spider on native species. We know they are much more competitive than native spiders, and this further confirms their impact on prey species."

They possess a fast-acting neurotoxic venom with a very similar composition to true black widows that can cause neuromuscular paralysis in terrestrial vertebrates which allows them to occasionally feed on small reptiles and mammals.

Aiste Vitkauskaite, researcher at the Venom Systems Lab, Ryan Institute, NUI Galway, said: "False widow spiders, just as their close relatives' black widow spiders, have extraordinary prey capture techniques and remarkably potent venom which allows them to capture small vertebrate prey many times larger than the spider itself with surprising ease.

"In the last three years alone, we have observed two occasions of the alien Noble False Widow capturing and feeding on protected species of vertebrate animals in Ireland and Britain. As the Noble False Widow continues to expand its range and increase populations across Ireland and Britain, we should expect to observe similar predation events on small vertebrate animals by this spider, including protected species."

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Male spiders are attracted by a female like planets orbiting a star

The tiny male golden orb-weaving spider faces a considerable challenge when searching for a mate. He is a fraction of the size of the massive female, but must carefully enter her web and approach her without being noticed, because the cannibalistic female will kill and eat him if he makes one wrong move on her web. Add to this gamble the competition he faces from other males also on the delicate arena of the web, and you have a complex optimization problem that even human analysts would find daunting. Yet these little spiders barely have what we would recognize as a brain. How then do they manage? This is a question that has captivated Alex Jordan and members of his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior for over a decade. Now, teaming up with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, they are closer to an answer.

The solution appears to lie in animal magnetism, or more correctly, in the effective physical forces that males and females experience on the elastic surface of the spider web. "Our initial concept was to explore the idea that these spiders moving on the web behave like electrons orbiting a nucleus, or planets orbiting a star," says Jordan, who leads the Integrative Behavioral Ecology Lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and is co-senior author on the study. From this initial idea, a research program was born, leading the two teams to develop a physical model and perform experiments in the Panamanian rainforest.

Competitive web arena

While the details of the precise physics ultimately diverged from both atomic and cosmic levels, the concept proved useful. "Imagine electrons orbiting a nucleus, or a massive star in space, so large that it generates its own gravitational field pulling in objects around it -- the giant, cannibalistic female can be thought of in the same way," says Jordan. "Now imagine smaller planets, satellites, or comets coming near this attractive force -- these are our tiny, brave males." Approach the star (or female) too rapidly, or at the wrong angle, and you risk getting caught up in her attractive pull. On a cosmic scale, this will result in a cosmic collision that vaporizes the planet. For the intrepid male, an incorrect approach means falling into a fatal attraction and ending up as prey.

"Working in the rainforests of Panama, I've seen over-zealous males fall victim to the cannibalistic females many times, especially when they take the wrong path, or approach the female too fast," says Sylvia Garza, co-author of the study, who spent months in Panama as a Master's student recording the behavior of male and female spiders, then using machine-learning approaches to track their every movement.

Vibratory cues

Just as the smaller planets have their own gravitational pull, the males also attract one another -- initially approaching the perceived rival. The males also start to repel each other as they get closer and closer, in this way behaving much more like electrons around a nucleus.

"The motion of these males resembles interactions between particles that attract or repel one another depending on the distance between them," says Amir Haluts, a physicist by training and lead author of the study from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Co-senior author Nir Gov, also from the Weizmann, says: "We use models to map the effective physical forces that males experience, allowing us to explain their motion on the web, as well as contest dynamics of males of different sizes." As the males orbit one another, they will eventually come too close together, crashing into each other in open fighting. All this is played out on the surface of the web, which acts as the conduit for the vibrations males use to communicate, but which can also alert the female to their presence and lead to a fatal attack.

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Spiders' web secrets unraveled

Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark.

Their creation of a web-building playbook or algorithm brings new understanding of how creatures with brains a fraction of the size of a human's are able to create structures of such elegance, complexity and geometric precision. The findings, now available online, are set to publish in the November issue of Current Biology.

"I first got interested in this topic while I was out birding with my son. After seeing a spectacular web I thought, 'if you went to a zoo and saw a chimpanzee building this you'd think that's one amazing and impressive chimpanzee.' Well this is even more amazing because a spider's brain is so tiny and I was frustrated that we didn't know more about how this remarkable behavior occurs," said senior author Andrew Gordus, a Johns Hopkins behavioral biologist. "Now we've defined the entire choreography for web building, which has never been done for any animal architecture at this fine of a resolution."

Web-weaving spiders that build blindly using only the sense of touch, have fascinated humans for centuries. Not all spiders build webs but those that do are among a subset of animal species known for their architectural creations, like nest-building birds and puffer fish that create elaborate sand circles when mating.

The first step to understanding how the relatively small brains of these animal architects support their high-level construction projects, is to systematically document and analyze the behaviors and motor skills involved, which until now has never been done, mainly because of the challenges of capturing and recording the actions, Gordus said.

Here his team studied a hackled orb weaver, a spider native to the western United States that's small enough to sit comfortably on a fingertip. To observe the spiders during their nighttime web-building work, the lab designed an arena with infrared cameras and infrared lights. With that set-up they monitored and recorded six spiders every night as they constructed webs. They tracked the millions of individual leg actions with machine vision software designed specifically to detect limb movement.

"Even if you video record it, that's a lot of legs to track, over a long time, across many individuals," said lead author Abel Corver, a graduate student studying web-making and neurophysiology. "It's just too much to go through every frame and annotate the leg points by hand so we trained machine vision software to detect the posture of the spider, frame by frame, so we could document everything the legs do to build an entire web."

They found that web-making behaviors are quite similar across spiders, so much so that the researchers were able to predict the part of a web a spider was working on just from seeing the position of a leg.

"Even if the final structure is a little different, the rules they use to build the web are the same," Gordus said. "They're all using the same rules, which confirms the rules are encoded in their brains. Now we want to know how those rules are encoded at the level of neurons."

Future work for the lab includes experiments with mind-altering drugs to determine which circuits in the spider's brain are responsible for the various stages of web-building.

"The spider is fascinating," Corver said, "because here you have an animal with a brain built on the same fundamental building blocks as our own, and this work could give us hints on how we can understand larger brain systems, including humans, and I think that's very exciting.

Read more at Science Daily

Spiders in space: Without gravity, light becomes key to orientation

Spider web

Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought.

The spider experiment by the US space agency NASA is a lesson in the frustrating failures and happy accidents that sometimes lead to unexpected research findings. The question was relatively simple: on Earth, spiders build asymmetrical webs with the center displaced towards the upper edge. When resting, spiders sit with their head downwards because they can move towards freshly caught prey faster in the direction of gravity.

But what do arachnids do in zero gravity? In 2008, NASA wanted to inspire middle schools in the US with this experiment. But even though the question was simple, the planning and execution of the experiment in space was extremely challenging. This led to a number of mishaps.

Two specimens from different spider species flew to the International Space Station (ISS) as "arachnauts," one (Metepeira labyrinthea) as the lead and the other (Larinioides patagiatus) as a reserve in case the first didn't survive.

The reserve spider escaped

The reserve spider managed to break out of its storage chamber and into the main chamber. The chamber couldn't be opened for safety reasons, so the extra spider could not be recaptured. The two spiders spun somewhat muddled webs, getting in each other's way.

And if that were not enough, the flies included as food reproduced more quickly than expected. Over time, their larvae crawled out of the breeding container on the floor of the case into the experimental chamber, and after two weeks covered large parts of the front window. After a month, the spiders could no longer be seen behind all the fly larvae.

This failure long nagged at Paula Cushing of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, who participated in the planning of the spider experiment. When the opportunity for a similar experiment on board the ISS cropped up again in 2011, the researcher got Dr. Samuel Zschokke of the University of Basel involved to prepare and analyze the new attempt. This time, the experiment started with four spiders of the same species (Trichonephila clavipes): two flew to the ISS in separate habitats, two stayed on Earth in separate habitats and were kept and observed under identical conditions as their fellows traveling in space -- except that they were exposed to terrestrial gravity.

The females were males

The plan was originally to use four females. But another mishap occurred: the spiders had to be chosen for the experiment as juveniles and it is extremely difficult to determine the sex of juvenile animals. In the course of the experiment, two of the spiders turned out to be males, which differ markedly in body structure and size from females of this species when fully grown. But finally there was a stroke of luck -- one of the males was on board the space station, the other on Earth.

The arachnids spun their webs, dismantled them, and spun new ones. Three cameras in each case took pictures every five minutes. Zschokke, Cushing and Stefanie Countryman of the University of Colorado's BioServe Space Technologies that oversaw the design and launch of the space flight certified habitats containing the spiders and fruit fly larvae and camera system to the International Space Station analyzed the symmetry of 100 spider webs and the orientation of the spider in the web using about 14,500 images.

It turned out that the webs built in zero gravity were indeed more symmetrical than those spun on Earth. Their center was closer to the middle and the spiders did not always keep their heads downwards. However, the researchers noticed that it made a difference whether the spiders built their webs in lamplight or in the dark. Webs built on the ISS in lamplight were similarly asymmetrical as the terrestrial webs.

Light as a back-up system

"We wouldn't have guessed that light would play a role in orienting the spiders in space," says Zschokke, who analyzed the spider experiment and published the results with his colleagues in the journal Science of Nature. "We were very fortunate that the lamps were attached at the top of the chamber and not on various sides. Otherwise, we would not have been able to discover the effect of light on the symmetry of webs in zero gravity."

Analysis of the pictures also showed that the spiders rested in arbitrary orientations in their webs when the lights were turned off, but oriented themselves away -- i.e. downwards -- when the lights were on. It seems spiders use light as an additional orientation aid when gravity is absent. Since spiders also build their webs in the dark and can catch prey without light, it had previously been assumed that light plays no role in their orientation.

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